Away go thoughts of water-folk and of everything else, for there is a great jerk. My heart goes off at a hand gallop; my rod instinctively stands upright. Fifty yards away there is a rush and the sudden flash of a silver streak of light--I lower the point for an instant, an act of courtesy always to be paid to a leaping fish--then there is a whirr and a few moments of delirious, delicious agitation. Yohann, my man, is making for the land where the Count has built him a wonderful granite embankment for the convenient landing of fish; we reach it and I step out; but my captive has not the smallest intention of giving in yet; he is closer in now, but repeatedly he bolts away and increases the distance again. Suddenly I perceive that C. G. is beside me: he, too, is playing a fish--a big one he tells me. It is a race who will requisition the huge landing-net first. Up and down the embankment we go, and the fish are leaping and struggling close in now; but C. G. gets his home first, a beauty of nearly twenty pounds; and mine, tired out, is ready to be landed as soon as the net is free. A truly lovely fish, too, but smaller than his by several pounds--no time to weigh either of them now. Back we go, and in three minutes both are on land once more, and each is busy in the deliriously fascinating occupation of battling with another giant. Oh! this is life indeed. Better half-an-hour of Harraka than a cycle of Cathay! Quick, C. G.; land your fish and give me the net, and let us both start again; this is too splendid to waste a minute! And again we put forth our fatal phantoms, and two more beauties are presently transferred from the secret places of this wonder-tank to the hot granite of the Count's quay--and then, alas! it is midnight, and we must go. Seventy-five pounds, in six fish, in little more than half-an-hour; it is good enough, C. G. Furthermore, we are the richer by more than these mere seventy-five pounds of trout-flesh, for we have seen a great sight to-night; we have been in Paradise; we have burst, this day, into the secret places of the trout people, the very sanctuary and central rendezvous of the tribe. What should we have caught had we been able to continue our fishing on that marvellous night? Who can tell? If the fish are on the feed, really on the feed, in that wonderful basin, I believe you might catch any number while the appetite of the community lasted; there is no lack of them. No possible amount of angling could produce the smallest visible effect upon the numbers of the thousands we saw that night, when the basin boiled and splashed again with the play of them. A paradise indeed for anglers is this Finland paradise of the Voksa, and, alas! a paradise lost. CHAPTER V AFTER DUCKS ON LADOGA